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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281699">Regular Scary</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/catboykenobi/pseuds/catboykenobi'>catboykenobi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Gore, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, It Gets Better, M/M, Major Character Injury, Noose, Slurs, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, death by suffocation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:55:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281699</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/catboykenobi/pseuds/catboykenobi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>what richie saw in the deadlights, and what he did about it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Regular Scary</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>pls read the tags dog i'm not fucking around!!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was yelling—</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Yippee-kai-yay, motherfu—!“ </em>
</p><p> </p><p>—and then he was floating. He was seeing a thousand (no, a million) things all at once, and nothing at the same time. He understood what Bev meant, then, about how encapsulating the deadlights are. Or, he would have, if a “him” and a “Bev” even really existed anymore. There were endless possibilities extending into infinity and endless realities being stopped short in front of his eyes, like cracks spiderwebbing along a glass window. </p><p> </p><p>Then, he dropped. </p><p> </p><p>He dropped into a crack, falling into its abyss of possibilities, and it snapped shut above him. </p><p> </p><p>When he came to, he forgot where he was for a second. What was he doing? He was... he was... he was running away from Pennywise, right. With Eddie. Where was Eddie? Richie gave a start as he really, finally came back into his own body (had he really spaced out here of all places?) and looked around himself. The tentacle that had been chasing them was gone, but... so was Eddie. A cold wave of dread settled like a fist in his gut, and it tingled in his nose and lips. He looked at the doors in front of him — Very Scary, Scary, and Not Scary At All. Very Scary and Not Scary At All were boarded up; that was wrong. </p><p> </p><p>How did he know it was wrong? The thought left as quickly as it came. He focused instead on the only uncovered door: Regular Scary. He swallowed thickly, feeling his hand twitch in compulsion to open it. He had to find Eddie, he had to find the others, he didn’t have time to play along with Pennywise’s bullshit. But something compelled him to anyways. Something (probably the same something that made this whole situation feel so eerily not-right, so much more wrong than it already was) made him reach out and open that door. </p><p> </p><p>It was dark inside. Richie knew better than to expect that to be it. He had learned a long time ago that people were rarely afraid of the dark — they were afraid of what was in it. He was no different. His pale, trembling hand reached forward and groped for the pull-cord of the closet light; he didn’t really know what he was expecting. A torso, or some kind of fucked up animal or something. He wasn’t sure why. </p><p> </p><p>What he saw was so much worse. So, so much worse. </p><p> </p><p>He flicked on the light and immediately had to swallow back vomit. He had found Eddie. Swinging from a rafter in the closet, a noose wrapped around his neck. He looked pressed and proper, all starched collar dress shirt and ironed slacks, tie tied neatly and hair combed quite smartly. If the circumstances were different Richie would have been unable to describe him as anything other than cripplingly attractive; but instead, there he hung, cobwebs dripping from his blue lips. He had suffocated to death.  No broken necks for poor old Kaspbrak, of course not. That would have been too easy. Nothing in life could have been easy for Eddie, could it? Richie held back another wave of vomit. Eddie looked so quiet. So defeated, so... sad. Like he’d been chastised by his mother again and just wanted to do whatever it took to make it stop. </p><p> </p><p>He had made it stop, all right. </p><p> </p><p>Another something made Richie step inside that closet. It was claustrophobic; full of women’s clothing, full of women’s shoes, full of purses and scarves and accessories that were as garish as they were almost comically sized. There were a few pitiful suits buried in the mix, and a surprising amount of pill bottles upon closer inspection. It was almost like a caricature, and Richie thought for a moment that if he had come up with the closet himself he would have laughed himself blue in the face. But not like this. Not with Eddie — beautiful, handsome, fiery, angry, passionate Eddie — hanging in the middle of it, dead without ever escaping the Hell his life had become (or never really stopped being). It just wasn’t fair. </p><p> </p><p>“...Richie..?”</p><p> </p><p>He snapped to attention, eyes dragged from wherever they had drifted during his dissociation by the reedy voice. There was a whistle to it. Like he had cracked his windpipe. </p><p> </p><p>“Rhh...Richie...” A pale, feeble hand with blue-tinged fingers reached out for him. </p><p> </p><p>Richie knew Eddie must be dead. He knew that there was no way Eddie could have survived having a cracked windpipe, not with blue lips and fingers. He knew he was dead. </p><p> </p><p>But he hoped he was alive. </p><p> </p><p>So he rushed close, closer than he had dared before, hands hovering in Eddie’s personal space. He found himself unable to say anything; he was frozen, suddenly. </p><p> </p><p>“Richie...” Finally, Eddie’s head lifted up, and Richie felt shock and revulsion straight down his throat, deep into his chest and stomach. It was cold and choked him like seawater. He wanted to move, every single ancestor he had that had managed to not die screaming at him to move, but something kept him there, kept him entirely close to this... not-Eddie. </p><p> </p><p>He had yellow eyes. They were so bright, so hauntingly and sickeningly yellow, and Richie knew. Exactly what he knew, he wasn't sure, but he <em>knew</em>. </p><p> </p><p>“You… left me… to die.” The pauses in his accusation were pointed with throaty wheezes, the kind that made Richie’s throat bob in sympathy to how it must have stung. He gave a raspy cough, and Richie found it in himself to flinch. “You... were my best f-friend. You were supposed to... to protect me. And you left me behind.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> You were supposed to protect me.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>That’s always what he had done, wasn’t it?</p><p> </p><p>He had always tried to protect Eddie, when it really mattered. He teased and poked and prodded and provoked, but. He wanted Eddie to be safe. He had always wanted that, that had never gone away. </p><p> </p><p>“Don’t you love me?”</p><p> </p><p>“What?” Richie’s voice cracked from disuse. It must have been a new record for him being quiet. </p><p> </p><p>“I said...” His voice was so eerily flat. Eddie was not flat, he was never flat. “Don’t you love me? You do, don’t you? Ever since we were kids. You’ve always been a queer. Dirty.”</p><p> </p><p>No. No, no, no. No, Eddie would never say that. Would he?</p><p> </p><p>“Eddie, I’m not... I’m —“</p><p> </p><p>“Save it.” Richie nearly choked from how hard he swallowed his words. “I saw how you looked at me, how you look at me, I felt how you touched me,” Eddie continued, “it’s so fucking disgusting. And you loved me and you couldn’t even protect me. You left.”</p><p> </p><p>Richie stumbled back, half a hair’s width. “I — I had to, Eddie, we moved, I —“</p><p> </p><p>“You <em> what </em>? You’d never leave if you had a choice?” His hand shot forward and gripped Richie’s wrist, fingers digging into his pulse. “What a fucking faggot thing to say. Bowers was right about you.” The fingers dug in more, and Richie could vaguely feel something like claws pressing into his skin (blood; hot, wet blood) but he couldn’t drag his eyes from Eddie — his face, his empty yellow eyes, so different from the adorably aggressive doe eyes he was used to... he couldn’t look away from the cobwebs stretching and flexing with the movement of his mouth, clinging to his teeth and cracked, blue lips. </p><p> </p><p>“It should have been you,” Eddie said, and suddenly he was standing, standing taller than Richie, who choked back a sob. </p><p> </p><p>“It should have been me.” He meant it. It should have been him; if he had to choose a world without Richie or a world without Eddie, he’d choose a world without Richie every time. </p><p> </p><p>“It could have been you,” Eddie said, and suddenly there was a noose gently wrapped around Richie’s neck. It was soft, and warm; an anchor. Richie imagined a loving hand stroking his jaw and neck might have felt similar, once upon a time in a reality where he deserved love. </p><p> </p><p>“It can be me?” he asked, and meant it. If he could make this a world where Eddie was alive, and he wasn’t, then he’d do it. Practically a win-win. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> How can you kill me if you can’t even kill yourself? </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“You just have to let go. Fall. Trust me, Richie... you’ll float.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Beep, beep, motherfucker! </em>
</p><p> </p><p>So he let himself fall. </p><p> </p><p>And he fell, for real, and landed, for real. He felt himself get sucked out of the spiderwebbing cracks, felt the memories rush back, felt the pain of landing on his ass rock his body. He was getting too old for this. He blinked the lights out of his eyes, a horrible ringing in his ears starting to dissipate, and oh. There was Eddie. Alive. Alive, happy. A hand reached up to cradle the back of Eddie’s neck. </p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Rich! I think I killed it man, I think I killed it for real!”</p><p> </p><p>He saw it. He saw the claw, saw Pennywise rear up for the kill <span>— </span>No. No, he wouldn’t let Eddie go again. It only took a second; a quick roll, a quick flip. He didn’t even have time to think it through. </p><p> </p><p>(Of course, given the time to think it through, he still would have chosen this. He would have always chosen this.)</p><p> </p><p>The pain wasn’t so bad, surprisingly. Though that was probably the shock; what really hurt was seeing Eddie’s face. He looked so sad. He didn’t want Eddie to be sad. He was a disgusting queer that had left Eddie to rot in Derry because his parents had wanted to move to fucking Colorado. This was okay; it was good, even. Eddie would live. Nobody would really miss Richie Tozier. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> His death is a punchline to the only funny joke he ever told: his life. </em>
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